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Sunday, July 28, 2013

Bring Forth Godly Seed—Command or Option? A Summer Series #2

As some of you may remember, I embarked on a journey to read
the Bible through late last year. Well as an aside note to this post, I am now
reading in the book of Psalm. I believe that is about half way through. It has
certainly been a journey, but I will have to save that for another post.

In this post, we are contemplating Malachi 2:15 where the Holy
Spirit, through the writer of the text, makes it known that God seeks a Godly
seed through the union of a husband and a wife. Before we go there though, I
want to share just one of the tiny but huge ideas from the Bible regarding
children that just seemed to leap off of the pages at me as I was reading in
the early books of the Bible.

As God was “laying down the law” (quite literally), His
thoughts about children from Leviticus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 18:10 jumped out
at me:

And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech,
neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.

There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire…

The reason these seemingly quiet, and seemingly sideline sort
of scriptures stood out to me was because I saw God’s heart for children kind
of up-close and personal. I’d been told that “God loves all the little children
of the world,” and I’d believed that He does, but to read His thoughts about
children during a period in history when children were sacrificed on the altars
of idol gods, just gave me a personal view of God’s love and passion for
children. For Him to single out a parent’s relation to their children during His presentation of do’s and don’ts for this new culture that He was
establishing, stood out to me as a subject that was very important to Him
although it was seemingly hidden in all of the “super-important” stuff of Old
Testament scripture.

Now let’s look at Malachi 2:15:

And did not he make
one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might
seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal
treacherously against the wife of his youth.

Here, the Holy Spirit reveals that God desires a godly seed
from the union of a husband and wife.

This leads me to the point of this post. As parents, we have
been given permission to raise our
children according to godliness. I use the word permission here intentionally.
I know that being a parent today is difficult. One minute we are solid and
resolute in our conviction and passion to raise our children according to
biblical values. The next minute, we find ourselves torn, and trying to
determine what’s too much and what’s not enough. When in actuality, we should
know exactly what to do if we have singleness of purpose. This verse gives us
the permission to have that singleness of purpose. If our purpose is to do what
Malachi 2:15 says, then our purpose as parents is clear –bring forth a godly
seed.

What does that look like?How can we do that? I believe that it entails, steering our children’s
thinking and their doing to line up with those ideas that we are convinced that
God stands for and is pleased with.

For example, your kid lies to you, you deal with it
according to the scriptures. You correct the action instead of ignoring it. Your
kid mistreats another kid. Do you ignore it, or do you correct it? Yes, you
correct it.

Seems pretty simple; however, after society adds its pressures
of the media and entertainment, after kids at school add in the influences of their
home life, and after your own child’s natural inclination toward sin, a parent can grow pretty tired of correcting.

But I want to encourage all of us through this post to press
on and correct those things because it gives our children the compass that they
will need to navigate this life.

Society will tell us that our kid’s compass should come from
going to school, and being with peers. Or that it should come from exposure to
pop-culture. They argue that in order for a child to grow into a balanced adult
who knows how to maneuver in our society, they have to be immersed in it.

I disagree, I do believe that they should be exposed to
certain aspects of culture as they grow, but that exposure needs to be age
appropriate and guided by loving, purposeful parents. And in order for us to do
that, we have to be resolute in what matters most in the raising of our
children. We can’t be persuaded to let this slide or that slide or buy into the
idea that they are children and will turn out how they will turn out-- no matter what (I had a friend to actually say this to me). No, we
have to be engaged and connected. We have to be convinced and convicted to
parenting God’s way!

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share your thoughts on the matter!

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